The success of Remotely Piloted Aircraft (or RPA) and Remotely Piloted Vehicles (RPVs) in recent military operations has led to increased interest in their capabilities and application to a variety of military missions (as well as civilian applications). For purposes of discussing this art area, terms such as “Remotely Piloted Aircraft,” “Unmanned Aerial Vehicle,” “Remotely Piloted Vehicle,” and “Highly Autonomous Vehicle” may be used interchangeably. Further, the art is equally applicable to aircraft, ground-based vehicles, and watercraft.
It should be noted that while the nomenclature “Unmanned Aerial Vehicles” (UAV) has been associated with this technology area, using the term “unmanned” is somewhat imprecise. Although the pilot is no longer onboard the platform, there remains a critical need for human involvement in order for RPVs or RPAs to successfully perform missions. This is especially true for the tactical reconnaissance and close air support mission areas where tasks are often time critical, many relevant mission inputs and contextual parameters are not digitized, target/friendly/non-combatant identification is complex and variable, and mission objectives and conditions on the ground vary constantly. RPV operators in these difficult, time sensitive mission areas will soon be expected to supervise multiple RPVs at the same time, requiring advances in management of mission critical information and aircraft control system.
Operational concepts in which a single pilot is responsible for multiple RPVs will necessarily involve supervisory control with requirements for the pilot to frequently shift attention between vehicles. Displays that facilitate rapid retrieval of each RPV's state and associated tasking are required. Moreover, new control methods will be necessary. Although each vehicle's flight will be highly automated to function in multi-RPV applications, the pilot will still need to interact with supporting automation systems and, at times, temporarily take direct manual control of an individual vehicle. This is due to the highly dynamic nature of missions and the need for pilots to be able to apply added value or understanding of the situation to otherwise automated decision processes. For example, there will be times when the pilot will have contextual information not available to the supporting automation and the pilot will need to make a quick redirection of an RPV's flight path.
To succeed in an environment wherein a single pilot is responsible for the direction of a plurality of RPVs, a system must allow the pilot to direct future motion of a given RPV so that his attention may be subsequently directed to managing other tasks. Current methods to establish future path of vehicle movement are either too limited (e.g., employing fixed holding pattern) or require numerous selections to route planning systems (e.g., establishing future waypoints to navigate). Such input methods are too rigid (resulting in a coarse path description, typically consisting of linear path segments connected by waypoints) or too time consuming when it is desirable to quickly designate future vehicle paths. While efficient and precise future direction of RPVs is desirable in a single vehicle environment, the benefits are amplified in the envisioned applications wherein operators' attention is divided across multiple highly autonomous vehicles.
Therefore, there exists a need for methods and apparatus to facilitate rapid, precise, and highly configurable simultaneous operation of a plurality of RPVs by a single pilot.